Musician Neil Young speaks during a session at the International CES Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, in Las Vegas.

LA HONDA, California — The latest album from a living rock legend puts musical pressure on Monsanto, the agribusiness giant accused of everything from corrupting global politics to causing cancer with its pesticides.

Neil Young’s latest release is “The Monsanto Years,” a collaboration with Promise of the Real, a band that includes Willie Nelson’s sons, Micah and Lukas. Although the official release date is June 30, music critics are already responding to the album, which can be previewed on NPR Music’s First Listen.

“‘The Monsanto Years’ specifically looks at the issue from the perspective of a farmer who resorts to growing Monsanto-manufactured crops, but thinks often of his mother and father and the untainted farming traditions they passed down,” Jon Blistein wrote for Rolling Stone in March.

Appropriately for an album concerned with modern agriculture, the collaboration originated in a meeting between Young and Willie Nelson’s offspring at the 2014 Farm Aid music festival. “Young jammed with Willie Nelson’s sons … It went well enough that soon Young invited them out to California to bash out this set of protest folk coated in Crazy Horse-style grunge,” wrote Rolling Stone reviewer Jon Dolan last week.

Young joins many other activists, artists and consumers worldwide concerned with the influence of Monsanto and the effects of the multinational corporation’s products on health, bringing a passion to the project that’s absent even in some of his other overtly political works.

“He’s rarely driven his point home as vehemently as on ‘The Monsanto Years,’ a jeremiad against the agrochemical behemoth of the title and what he sees as American farming’s Frankenstein future,” Dolan wrote. “‘From the fields of Nebraska/To the banks of the Ohio/Farmers won’t be free to grow/What they want to grow,’ Young sings at one point. If the imagery evokes Woody Guthrie, the righteous rock & roll fire is pure Neil.”

Many critics comment on the rough, unpolished sound of “The Monsanto Years,” which reflects on both its origins and the urgency Young feels about saving the earth. NPR’s Tom Moon summed up this sentiment:

“Here, we have a series of taut and stone-simple Neil Young songs that fit together under a catchall concept (about companies wielding extraordinary influence over many aspects of our quality of life), each powered by its own supply of righteous fury. …

This is not subtle, ‘Harvest Moon’ Neil, brooding at the piano. This is ornery, snarly Neil. Give him a megaphone and a transcript of these lyrics, put him on a street corner and watch what happens.”

In one track, “People Want To Hear About Love,” Young complains about the willingness of Americans to ignore important issues in favor of feel-good stories and songs. In another, “Big Box,” he sings, “The whole town’s asleep.”

When it comes to conversations about the risks of GMOs and corporate capitalism run amok, “The Monsanto Years” is designed to be blasted on a stereo until it wakes up the neighbors.

Why is that? For expressing himself & decrying injustice & corruption in the world? You’re the idiot sir.

BackAsswardzz

Because he’s promoting a position that prevents millions of children from getting the nutrition they need to stave off blindness and death. That’s why.

Ron Holt

Sorry, you sound like a Monsanto rep. We don’t need their help getting nutrition to starving children.

BackAsswardzz

Like Young, you’re a bandwagon activist with no real understanding of what’s going on. Ban this, ban that. How about we ban you?

Ron Holt

Seriously? You’re serious about this Monsanto thing? This would be like debating a Holocaust denier. No thanks. Good day to you sir. Get well soon. Ron

BackAsswardzz

You completely avoided my question because you have no answers. You and a follower, not a leader, nor do you have any real subject matter expertise when it comes to GMO.

Ron Holt

Sorry, you sound like a Monsanto rep. We don’t need their help getting nutrition to starving children.

MarkDonners

GMO and its associated pesticides and herbicides are dangerous poisons. Eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto’s Roundup chemical fertilizer caused rats to develop horrifying tumors, widespread organ damage, and premature death. rats exposed to even the smallest amounts, “developed mammary tumors and severe liver and kidney damage as early as four months in males, and seven months for females.” The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney damage. Everywhere GMO is being grown, food allergies, disorders such as autism, reproductive disorders, digestive problems, and others have been skyrocketing in the human populations.

There has been a drastic decline of crop-pollinating insects all over the world, and what this means for the future of the world’s food supply. Wild pollinators like bumbl…ebees, butterflies, and beetles are basically disappearing. GMO industrial agricultural practices are causing this insect genocide. Pollinating insects in general, which include a wide range of insects and other animals, are simply vanishing from their normal habitats and foraging areas. That lower diversity and lower abundance of wild insects means less fruits and destruction of the diversity of plants and their fruits worldwide.

GMOs cross pollinate and their seeds can travel. It is impossible to fully clean up our contaminated gene pool. Self-propagating GMO pollution will outlast the effects of global warming and nuclear waste. The potential impact is huge, threatening the health of future generations. GMO contamination has also caused economic losses for organic and non-GMO farmers who often struggle to keep their crops pure.

GMOs increase herbicide use. Most GM crops are engineered to be “herbicide tolerant”―surviving deadly weed killers. Monsanto, for example, sells Roundup Ready crops, designed to survive applications of their Roundup herbicide. Between 1996 and 2008, US farmers sprayed an extra 383 million pounds of herbicide on GMOs. Overuse of Roundup results in “superweeds,” resistant to the herbicide. This is causing farmers to use even more toxic herbicides every year. Not only does this create environmental harm, GM foods contain higher residues of toxic herbicides. Roundup, for example, is linked with sterility, hormone disruption, birth defects, and cancer.

GM crops and their associated herbicides can harm birds, insects, amphibians, marine ecosystems, and soil organisms. They reduce bio-diversity, pollute water resources, and are unsustainable. For example, GM crops are eliminating habitat for monarch butterflies, whose populations are down 50% in the US. Roundup herbicide has been shown to cause birth defects in amphibians, embryonic deaths and endocrine disruptions, and organ damage in animals even at very low doses. GM canola has been found growing wild in North Dakota and California, threatening to pass on its herbicide tolerant genes on to weeds.

By mixing genes from totally unrelated species, genetic engineering unleashes a host of unpredictable side effects. Moreover, irrespective of the type of genes that are inserted, the very process of creating a GM plant can result in massive collateral damage that produces new toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and nutritional deficiencies.

GMOs do NOT increase yields, and work against feeding a hungry world.

Whereas sustainable non-GMO agricultural methods used in developing countries have conclusively resulted in yield increases of 79% and higher, GMOs do not, on average, increase yields at all. This was evident in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2009 report Failure to Yield―the definitive study to date on GM crops and yield.

The toxins associated with GMO should never be tolerated. NEONICOTINOID PESTICIDE neurotoxins are absolutely the main factor causing the collapse of bee and pollinator populations along with other lethal chemicals, Agent Orange herbicides, glysophate, etc. When these poisons are banned as they were in Europe the bee populations start to recover. GMO neonicotinoids, roundup etc. MUST BE BANNED OUTRIGHT and all the farmers along with USDA, Biotech and chemical companies told to cease and desist from what they are doing.

An even scarier prospect: the “BT” version of GMO soybeans and corn, (basically pesticides engineered directly into the plant )

The “BT toxin” gene is put into the DNA of the corn in order for it to manufacture its own toxins that kill pests. The BT gene originated from a soil bacteria that also infiltrates the microflora (friendly digestive bacteria) in your gut. The Bt gene converts the microflora in your intestine into toxin-manufacturing machines.

So, to be clear, eating GMO corn products can cause your gut (which is primarily responsible for keeping you healthy) to turn into a breeding ground for tiny little pesticide factories inside your body, actively creating toxins which are designed to kill living things. These toxins are found in the blood and are readily transferred across the placenta to developing babies in the womb.

Southern

Further evidence to support your many points is found in Monsanto’s canteen, which only serves non GMO foods!

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